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eqvanalytics.bsky.social
EQV Analytics
@eqvanalytics.bsky.social
1.6K followers 1.8K following 1.7K posts
Biologist, nonprofit CSO (opinions mine), fair-weather farmer, recovering academic, progressive christian. Probably a helluva lot older than you are.

Almost Heaven, Durham County, NC
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eqvanalytics.bsky.social
Man, #Starlink 's subscriber growth rate must have nosedived right into the toilet since Melon Husk went full-nazi. Even though I cancelled my subscription 2 years ago, lately they are bombarding me monthly with new efforts to hook me back in.
Snippet of an email from Starlink offering: "50% off for 2 years! We’d love to have you back. If you resume your Starlink service on any plan, you’ll get 50% off monthly service for the next 24 months. Reactivate Now!"
October 10, 2025 at 3:08 PM
eqvanalytics.bsky.social
If Peter Thiel's Christian I'm a Martian.

He's just the latest of history's paranoid strongmen to co-opt religion to cast opposition to him as "the work of Satan" in order to move the peons (today, MAGA Christians) to fight to the death for his self-interests and against their own.
wapo.st/4q5wR6S
Quotes from the WaPo article reporting tech billionaire Peter Thiel's Revelations end-times secret rants. "Thiel argued that critiques of technology and calls for stricter regulation by Thunberg and others appear to echo biblical interpretations of an Antichrist who will win power by offering the world “peace and safety” from apocalyptic destruction, according to the recordings. He previously cited Thunberg in a June interview with the New York Times." "Thiel, whose net worth is around $27 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, also used his private talks to criticize financial regulations. He said such rules were a sign that a singular world government has begun to emerge that could be taken over by an Antichrist figure who could then use it to exert control over people. “​​It’s become quite difficult to hide one’s money,” Thiel said, according to the recordings. “An incredible machinery of tax treaties, financial surveillance, and sanctions architecture has been constructed.” Wealth gives the “illusion of power and autonomy,” Thiel added, according to the recordings, “but you have this sense it could be taken away at any moment." "Thiel said in his third lecture, on Sept. 29, that only a religious argument could inspire the proper response to the threat of a growing web of global rules, according to the recording. “There are a lot of rational reasons I can give why the one world state’s a bad idea: Turn the planet into a prison; I think the tax rates would be very high,” he said, according to the recording. “But I think if you strip it from the biblical context, you will never find it scary enough. You will never really resist."
October 10, 2025 at 2:12 PM
eqvanalytics.bsky.social
A good walk this morning.
On Sowell Pond. A mirror-still tree-lined pond disturbed by a single radiating ring of ripples in the foreground. At the far end of the pond the treetops are shrouded in fog and the sky is grey. Continuum. Side view of a dead grey tree trunk in the explosively green forest. From its sharply angular cut end a riot of bright yellow mushrooms erupt.
September 12, 2025 at 1:04 PM
eqvanalytics.bsky.social
Starlink trouble ticket I just created regarding the company reactivating my account, without my permission, two years after I cancelled my service.
Text of a Starlink customer service trouble ticket reading "Hi. I cancelled this account years ago because I don't do business with fucking Nazis, but you little shits reactivated it without my permission. This is to inform you that I demand you immediately and PERMANENTLY deactivate this account, and that I will not be responsible for any charges you apply without my express permission. Eat shit and die."
September 9, 2025 at 9:45 PM
eqvanalytics.bsky.social
Q: How desperate is Leon Mush's #Starlink to show growth in its subscriber base?

A: So desperate that they just signed me up, without my permission, for a free month of service on an account I cancelled two years ago.

FTS.
Screenshot of a Starlink invoice showing I have an unasked-for free month of service coming on my long-ago cancelled account.
September 9, 2025 at 9:27 PM
eqvanalytics.bsky.social
One foot in the grave. Five to go.
Two photos of trump staring dull-eyed, slack-jawed, and hunched over at a secret service agent.
August 30, 2025 at 10:33 PM
eqvanalytics.bsky.social
Jaz and I found an exuberance of shrooms along the Sowell trail this morning. Made me feel like I should be on the lookout for leprechauns.
August 30, 2025 at 1:06 PM
eqvanalytics.bsky.social
Reviewer Becca Rothfeld could be brought up on aggravated assault charges for this brutal review of a simpering techbro's AI wet dreams. Fortunately no jury would convict her. wapo.st/45GYtXR
Sometimes an era is graced with a gift — a book that is not merely deficient in the usual ways, not merely insipid or uninspired, but epochal in its ineptitude. Amir Husain’s “The Cybernetic Society: How Humans and Machines Will Shape the Future Together” is dull, convoluted and written in the glib and ingratiating tones of a TED Talk. So far, so unexceptional. But it is also something more painful for its readers and more interesting for its critics: a monument to the vapidity and vulgarity of the culture that incubated it.
August 30, 2025 at 11:43 AM
eqvanalytics.bsky.social
Bluesky slapped my wrist for telling a trolling billionaire to grow the fuck up.

Heaven forfend.
August 24, 2025 at 6:28 PM
eqvanalytics.bsky.social
If we're very lucky, a rogue sunbeam may by chance reveal the transcendent in what we too often only half-see as commonplace.
An orb-weaver spider's large web is brilliantly lit by a single sunbeam in the otherwise dim early morning forest.
August 24, 2025 at 2:02 PM
eqvanalytics.bsky.social
Jaz hates it when we stop here, which we do on every hike, to admire the world's reflection in this still pond. He is perfectly kinetic, always wanting to move faster, farther, longer. Me, I love stillness and contemplation. Between the two of us we mitigate each other's worst excesses.
Sunlit forest reflecting brilliantly on a perfectly still and mirror-surfaced pond in the early morning. In the foreground, my dog Jaz turns his head away from the scene as if to say "can we *please* get on with this hike?"
August 24, 2025 at 2:02 PM
eqvanalytics.bsky.social
A Very Good Boy patiently awaiting our morning walk in the forest. Finally the weather is cool enough to make it a pleasure again.
A sixty pound black, tan, and white English Shepherd, Jaz, lounging on the porch, front paws delicately crossed, awaiting the first sign of me getting ready for our morning forest hike.
August 24, 2025 at 12:39 PM
eqvanalytics.bsky.social
Today's latest sheaf of memorial donation cards just arrived. Words simply cannot express how happy this makes me, to know there are folks who will eat well tonight because so many loved her. Thank you foodbankcenc.org
A pile of cards each announcing that "A gift has been given to The Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina by [....] in memory of [my wife]."
August 22, 2025 at 5:47 PM
eqvanalytics.bsky.social
Ugh. This is the kind of nightmare scenario you read about regarding developing-world drug manufacturing, not from a major Danish pharma in Bloomington IN for goodness sake. Get your shit together, Novo Nordisk.
Snippet of a paywalled pharma industry report headlined "Major US drug manufacturing plant did not properly investigate cat hair, pests, and other problems, FDA finds"
August 21, 2025 at 10:08 PM
eqvanalytics.bsky.social
While I'm grateful for the kind thought behind every condolence card, y'all can't possibly imagine what joy it brings me each time I open one of these. Thank you foodbankcenc.org
Cards reading "A gift has been given to The Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina by xxx in memory of Kate"
August 21, 2025 at 4:53 PM
eqvanalytics.bsky.social
August 21, 2025 at 2:51 PM
eqvanalytics.bsky.social
Wait...what? Why is the down pillow I just ordered certified by "Certified Divorce Specialist"???
August 20, 2025 at 2:23 PM
eqvanalytics.bsky.social
Don't just sit there, do something.

If you're a data analysis junky, bleed blue, live in the greater NC Triangle, & are looking to get involved as a volunteer on a super high-impact progressive NC campaign, please DM me.

You needn't be a card-carrying data scientist but if you are, great! #ncpol
August 17, 2025 at 1:45 PM
eqvanalytics.bsky.social
Nary a bird to be heard in the forest this hot Saturday AM, so Jaz & I turned to fungi appreciation instead. We found these handsome Coltricia & Trametes specimens.

Small world: back at the trailhead we encountered a group of 20+ from the Triangle Mycological Society gathering for a fungus freak.
Lovely Coltricia mushrooms growing from a dead stump, looking (to me, anyway) like platters hand-painted in a dozen different shades of brown. Stump of a dead tree covered with Trametes fungus, often called Turkey Tail for its similarity to the bird's plumage
August 16, 2025 at 2:06 PM
eqvanalytics.bsky.social
It's literally a cold dead box that apes words when you turn its crank. Nothing it spews is "genuine."

In order to sell this crap he needs to make you think there's genuine agency and intelligence there, but there's not. Don't fall for it. Don't let a dead soulless box eat your soul.
A quote from OpenAI's Sam Altman describing GPT-5's "warmer, friendlier, genuine" new feel.
August 16, 2025 at 11:01 AM
eqvanalytics.bsky.social
Our fridge is stuffed with casseroles, meats, soufflés, cookies. Every kitchen & living room surface is covered with condolence cards. Our barn has never been cleaner, and our yard has never looked nicer.

I get it, Durham. You loved her almost as much as I do, and near as much as she loved you. 🙏
The mantlepiece in the living room of our farmhouse, just outside Durham's northern city limits. It's choked with condolence cards expressing so many friends' love of and admiration for my wife of 45 years. Thank you, Durham; she loved you, too.
August 15, 2025 at 11:01 PM
eqvanalytics.bsky.social
I shit you not: this is the medical mastermind that kleptocurrency boy wants you to follow for all your home healthcare needs, instead of seeing a doctor or getting a vaccination.
Home page of the web site shilling the book "Home Doctor Practical Guide," featuring the large bold headline, "Why you should put garlic in your ear before going to sleep."
August 15, 2025 at 3:00 PM
eqvanalytics.bsky.social
The 1897 map in our kitchen shows the old RR's path from Roxboro thru Timberlake, Rougemont, & Bahama (my stompin' ground) and on to Durham. The trail will provide exceptional walkin', ridin', and runnin' access to recreation sites like Hill Forest & the Horton Grove & Penny's Bend Nature Preserves
Closeup of an old NC map, showing the railroad's route from Roxboro through Timberlake, Red Mountain, and Bahama to Durham.
August 10, 2025 at 8:50 PM
eqvanalytics.bsky.social
#Durm peeps let's make this happen!

The proposed trail, joining rural N Durham and S Person counties with the amenities & jobs of the city of Durham, would open vast rec and mobility opptys for rural & urban Triangle folk alike! A strong supporter, I'll see you Aug 28 at Spruce Pine Lodge in Bahama
Postcard announcing community meetings in support of the proposed Durham-to-Roxboro Rail Trail: August 18, 5 to 7 PM at Durham County Main Library, August 27, 6 to 8 PM at Edison Johnson Recreation Ctr, and August 28, 6 to 8 PM at Spruce Pine Lodge in Bahama.
August 10, 2025 at 8:27 PM
eqvanalytics.bsky.social
...follow the money: execs at Howard Hughes Medical Institute earn big bucks, like $3.7M to its Chief Investment Officer, & showers scientists-turned-HHMI-adminstrators with honors, wealth, and luxury. 🧵4/5
August 10, 2025 at 4:23 PM